Space News thread

[harrybarracuda]

128GB of Flash Memory, I wonder how much that cost when they built this thing?

As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft enters the home stretch for its historic July 14 flyby past Pluto, the mission's managers say the glitch that briefly knocked the spacecraft offline over the Fourth of July weekend will never happen again.

If anything goes wrong between now and July 14, the probe's computer is programmed to reboot itself and pick up where it left off.

"Just like resetting your computer at home," Glen Fountain, the $728 million mission's project manager at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, told reporters during a Monday teleconference.

Fountain and New Horizons' principal investigator, Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, explained why the piano-sized spacecraft hit a "speed bump" on Saturday.

The fault occurred when New Horizons' primary computer was compressing previously acquired image data for more efficient storage on a recorder, at the same time that it was loading the detailed command sequence for the flyby.

"The computer was trying to do these two things at the same time, and the two were more than the processor could handle at one time, so the processor said, 'I'm overloaded,'" Fountain said. That triggered protective software that shut down communications with Earth, switched operations from the primary to the backup computer, and then re-established communications about an hour later in safe mode.

Never again
Fountain said that it only took about 15 minutes to diagnose the problem once contact was re-established. He said the image data that was being compressed over the weekend was richer than the "test pattern" data that was used for earlier simulations — and that probably contributed to the computer overload.

"These two events will not happen concurrently again," he said.

The process of restoring normal operations and getting back to gathering scientific observations has taken a couple of days, and there are a couple of reasons for that.

Firstly, the spacecraft is nearly 3 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) away. That means it takes 4.5 hours for signals to be sent to the spacecraft at the speed of light, and another 4.5 hours for the spacecraft to send back a response. Secondly, Stern said the team decided to concentrate on spacecraft recovery rather than trying to make the observations that had been scheduled for Sunday and Monday — in his words, to "focus on the cake and not worry too much about the icing."

About 30 observations went by the wayside, out of a total of 496 that had been scheduled to take place starting Saturday and going all the way out past the flyby. None of the mission's high-priority observations will be lost, Stern said.

Stern said the team had weathered nine safe-mode episodes during the nine years since New Horizons' launch, "so we've been in a familiar circumstance a number of times before."

"I probably should tell you I'm more nervous, but I'm not," he said.

Encounter mode
New Horizons is currently less than 5.6 million miles (9 million kilometers) from Pluto and closing in at 30,000 mph (50,000 kilometers per hour). On Tuesday, the spacecraft is scheduled to begin a pre-programmed observational campaign for the encounter that will last until two days after the flyby.

During the time that New Horizons is in encounter mode, it won't go into safe mode if the computer encounters a problem. Instead, it will reboot and return to the pre-programmed time line. If the computer fails to execute a high-priority observational task due to a glitch, it will try again. "We make sure that if one trips, we have a backup," Stern said.

Stern noted that the July 14 flyby will take place on the 50th anniversary of the Mariner 4 probe's first successful flyby of Mars. "We will collect approximately 5,000 times as much data as Mariner 4, and for a first flyby reconnaissance, we're gonna knock your socks off," he promised.

Most of the data will be stored in the spacecraft's 128 gigabits of flash memory until after the encounter, and then sent back at an average rate of 2,000 bits per second. It'll take 16 months to transmit everything, Stern said.

"You've got to really be into delayed gratification if you want to be on this mission," he said.

After the teleconference, NASA released new pictures of Pluto that were based on data sent back between July 1 and 3, just before the glitch hit. The images show a swath of dark terrain around Pluto's midsection, breaking into what appears to be a series of regularly spaced dark spots.

"This object is unlike any other that we have observed," Stern said. "While Pluto has some similarities to Triton [Neptune's largest moon], it is not Triton. It looks like it has a much more complicated story to tell us."

Glitch-B-Gone: All Systems Go for New Horizons' Final Approach to Pluto - NBC News

[Takeovers]

128GB of Flash Memory, I wonder how much that cost when they built this thing?

Not cheap for sure. However you must remember how it will be used. Most of the scientific data will be accumulated during one day of flyby. Data transmission speed is low at this distance. They will fill up memory to capacity in that time and then take years to transmit them to earth.

[harrybarracuda]

A million miles a day. Not bad going.

Pluto Shows Its Heart In Detailed NASA Photo

Thursday, 9th July 2015 09:50

You'll love NASA's new close-up snap of dwarf planet Pluto.

The agency's New Horizons spacecraft has sent back its most detailed photograph yet, showing a large bright area resembling a heart.

The spacecraft was just under five million miles from Pluto when it took the photo on 7 July, NASA said.

The heart-shaped area measures around 1,200 miles across, with a large polar region above it.

A dark region seen in the bottom left is known informally by astronomers as "the whale".

NASA's spacecraft is set to get even closer to Pluto, and will take an image with significantly better resolution at its closest approach on 14 July.

NASA researcher Jeff Moore said: "The next time we see this part of Pluto at closest approach, a portion of this region will be imaged at about 500 times better resolution than we see today."

The craft will get to within 7,800 miles of Pluto's surface. Mr Moore added: "It will be incredible."

In April New Horizons sent back its first colour image of Pluto, which was considered the ninth planet in our solar system until 2006 when it was reclassified.

The NASA craft is around the size of a baby grand piano and is the fastest spacecraft ever launched, travelling at around a million miles a day.

It was launched in 2006 and is powered by plutonium.

Scientists want to learn more about the atmosphere of Pluto because it is mainly nitrogen, like Earth's.

[Takeovers]

New picture from Edit Pluto only 3 days before flyby.

Here a picture of some John Hopins University scientists having a first look at it.

[Takeovers]

And here the picture.

[palexxxx]

New picture from Mars only 3 days before flyby.

Here a picture of some John Hopins University scientists having a first look at it.

Is it Mars or Pluto?

[Latindancer]

Neither.... they're checking out Teakdoor's "Sexy Gifs" thread !

[Takeovers]

Is it Mars or Pluto?

Sorry, Pluto of course.

[Neo]

And here the picture.

Runway of the Gods.?

[Takeovers]

About 9 hours from now the last short data transmission from New Horizons is expected before the flyby. After that the whole probe will be oriented to Pluto to use all the scientific instruments. During that time the antenna will not aim at earth so no data transmission is possible. Also all the energy of the nuclear battery will be used to feed the instruments. Nothing to spare for transmission. Scientists will be waiting anxiously until the flyby is completed and New Horizons orients itself again for transmission of data to earth.

[kingwilly]

New Horizon is getting nearer its closest approach to Pluto and its moons.

Closest approach pictures will be amazing.

Here are two pictures. One as the camera can get it right now. The second with some picture enhancement software run over it.

Eh ? Is that the deathstar ? Are you playing a joke on us?

[Latindancer]

Eh ? Is that the deathstar ? Are you playing a joke on us?

Comments like this are the measure of the man.

[OhOh]

Are you playing a joke on us?

"Enhanced" is the word you may have inadvertently missed from his post.

[harrybarracuda]

I missed this. How poetic.

Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930, is actually traveling on the New Horizons probe, or at least one ounce of his ashes are. He gave his blessing to the mission in the 1990s, and after his death the family released the ashes to be built into an inscribed container on the spacecraft.

[harrybarracuda]

And now you can have a look around Mars....

NASA Mars Trek

[Luigi]

Latest pic, and I think it has now gone into quiet time to fully focus on it's job.

[harrybarracuda]

Can you believe it will be sending data back at 2kb/s.

So be prepared to wait.

[Luigi]

Can you believe it will be sending data back at 2kb/s.

So be prepared to wait.

And that will be traveling 3 Billion miles.

Quite amazing, what the human race have achieved and developed over the last say, century.

[harrybarracuda]

Exactly. When you think this was 1903....

[Latindancer]

What amazes me is the progress in aircraft design in the 1930s. Here are many ( unfortunately alphabetically....not chronologically ).


Aircraft from 1930 - 1939

[Takeovers]

And that will be traveling 3 Billion miles.

New Horizons costs app. 700 Million $. That's quite cheap per mile.

New Horizons has sent a message back after passing through the Pluto system. Telemetry data indicates that everything went well, without a hitch. But after this message it is now back to doing science without contact. It is still near enough to do valuable observations. So this short contact was mainly to calm the nerves of the anxiously waiting scientists. NASA had calculated the risk of some accident during flyby at 2 out of 10000 but it is still good to know there was no problem.

After the present observation session is completed they will do a major dump of important data, then make a schedule for the order in getting information down, most important first. The total download time will be app. 16 months.

[Luigi]

Size comparison between Earth, Pluto and Charon.



I read before that from Earth, Pluto has similar levels of illumination as a lump of charcoal.

So pretty impressive discovering it in the first place.

[Takeovers]

Just saw a NASA press conference on first results. They got a first batch of data and a picture. This is a small batch that was sent just to get any data in case something goes wrong and they lose their probe.

They are very excited. This small amount of data alredy throws out a number of theories and requires to rethink many assumptions. With all the data coming it can only get better.

The first detailed photo of a small region on Pluto shows no craters. That means it is a geological active region that has erased all old craters just like on earth. That area may be as young as 100 million years or less. There are mountins 3km high and they are sure they are mostly water ice. They don't know yet what is driving the geologic activity. A first guess is heat produced by radioactive decay. However so far it was generally thought that is not a sufficiently strong energy source on such a small body.

[Neo]

Potential future resources then, sounds like an ideal fuel stop for space built ships if there's water.

[Takeovers]

Potential future resources then, sounds like an ideal fuel stop for space built ships if there's water.

We are learning at the moment that huge amounts of water are everywhere. Even Mars that has been expected to be a super dry desert has at least enough water to cover its whole surface 20m deep and we keep discovering more water there. The Dawn probe orbiting ceres is confirming that Ceres too has lots of water.